but if you make a youtube stunt that hurts nobody you can get 20 years in prison and the FAA acts like you besmirched the stellar reputation of the aviation industry.
It's rather irritating. The law was made with a flexible range of punishments to permit the judge of any particular case to use discretion when determining an appropriate punishment. The maximum permitted is thus rather high. So now every article written about the subject lazily cites "up to 20 years", and thus everyone reading those articles gets the impression that he's actually likely to get 20 years for this incident.
I point my car at a wall and drive into it on purpose for views... And suddenly that's a possibility of jail time? That's crazy.
There needs to be a minimum number of permitted years when death is involved with clear negligence. Sadly there isn't any our court systems use max permitted years to pick and choose who they can punish. Dumb kid who crashes his plane on purpose versus safety inspector who Actually killed hundreds of people?
There is a clear disconnect here.
Also whilst there can be mitigated circumstance you cannot argued for 0 max. There is a crime, there could be danger … 0 max meant anyone officially can do this without consequences?
Or you could waste the opportunity and throw the dude in jail, almost ensuring he's never a productive member of society again. That's the norm in the "land of the free"[1]
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarcera...